Ai wa Itsumo
by BeastmasterFC
Summary: The Slayers gang take shelter at an old, haunted castle and become embroiled in a love story thousands of years old.


Ai wa Itsumo (Love is Forever)  
  
By Fire Child  
  
Heylo! This is my first-ever Slayers fic! The main premise was koppii-ed (ack, bad Slayers pun) from a wonderful (and, incidentally, yaoi) Ronin Warriors fanfic, titled Boo, which was written by the FC-proclaimed Goddess of RW Fanfiction, Tenshi no Korin. Flames will be read, laughed at, and summarily deleted, and flamers will be fed to my pet Juujinkan. Happy reading!  
  
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It was a dark evening, promising a storm later, when Lina-tachi arrived at a large, deserted, unlocked castle that would not have looked out of place in a King Arthur TV special. (Just what an English-style castle was doing in a Japanese series is up to you, dear reader, to conjecture.) They paused a moment at the door, unsure of whether or not to enter. "It looks creepy," Filia observed. "I'm not sure we should go in." Lina scoffed.  
  
"What are you afraid of, Filia, haunted mildew? Don't be such a shrinking violet." A soft clearing of the throat brought everyone's attention to Xelloss.  
  
"I've heard rumors about this place…" he began. Zelgadis picked him up by the collar.  
  
"Well, what are they?" Xelloss smirked.  
  
"Do you really want to know?" Zelgadis, unaware of the warning signs, shouted,  
  
"Yes!" Xelloss' smirk grew wider.  
  
"Sore wa himitsu des."  
  
"AARGH!" However, before Zelgadis could inflict serious mayhem on the grinning Trickster Priest, Amelia stopped him.  
  
"Zelgadis-san, don't you think you should wait to beat Xelloss-san into a pulp until after we've figured out what to do?" The chimera sighed and released his snickering captive.  
  
"You're right, Amelia." A cough from Gourry brought everyone back to reality.  
  
"Um, guys," he said, "It's starting to rain." With that, the entire crew dashed inside, having had experience with the ferocious storms this area produced. Once in the main hall, Lina made a fire in the gigantic fireplace by the simple expedient of a well-placed Fireball to the logs already in said fireplace, and Xelloss sat down in what the rest of the group recognized as his 'story-telling' posture.  
  
"Mukashii-mukashii," he began, "a headstrong, high-spirited princess lived in this very castle. Her mother had died many years back, and her only sibling was a quite scary older sister," Lina winced in sympathy, "whom her father much preferred. Before the death of his wife, the king had been a kind, loving father, but her death transformed him into a cold, hard- hearted man. Thus, the princess' only escape was in her art, for she was an accomplished painter. One day, har father hired a new groom for the horses that he loved more than his two children, and the legend says the groom and the princess fell in love. However, her father disapproved, and, soon afterward, both young lovers died under mysterious circumstances, and the princess, it is said, still haunts the castle. Oh, she's harmless," he added, correctly interpreting the looks of shock on the faces of his companions, "if you don't mind being ogled by a shade while you're napping. She won't hurt you. Scare you out of your next six lifetimes, maybe, but she won't hurt you." Filia snorted.  
  
"And, of course, you'll feed off our fear." Xelloss did the little wink- and-a-finger thing.  
  
"Of course, Fi-chan." Filia growled, her tail poking out from under the hem of her dress.  
  
"Don't. Call. Me. Fi-chan."  
  
"Sure thing, Fi-chan." Filia, peeved beyond her limits, whipped out Mace- sama and bashed the giggling Mazoku with it.  
  
"NAMAGOMI!" Suddenly, Amelia sat up with a start.  
  
"Whoa! When Filia-san bashed Xelloss-san, I thought I heard a giggle."  
  
"That must have been Xelloss." Zelgadis answered. "Either that or you imagined it."  
  
"No, it was a female giggle." Zelgadis blinked, and Xelloss peeled himself off of the wall and said,  
  
"Well, I guess it was the ghost, then." Everyone there, except for Xelloss, of course, blanched. In due course, the incident was forgotten, and Lina-tachi went to bed, Lina, Amelia, and Filia to one room, Gourry, Xelloss, and Zelgadis to another. Sometime later that night, Lina woke with a start to see a female figure standing by the open window, hair and dress whipping in the breeze.  
  
"Chi…" Lina then saw that it was just Filia, standing with her back to them. "kuso." Wait… there was no breeze! Lina shook Amelia awake and tapped on the dragon priestess' shoulder. Filia turned to face them, and it was then that Lina got the worst shock of her life. Instead of their normal sapphire hue, Filia's eyes were a bright, feral gold. She regarded them without comprehension, then brushed by the stunned sorceresses, opened the door, and left. Lina and Amelia followed her, Lina pausing only to knock on the guys' door and indelicately inform them of the situation. "Guys, follow me. Filia's possessed."  
  
"Oh, is that all," Xelloss grumped. "I've been saying that for ages, but nobody believed me." Gourry scratched his head.  
  
"What happened, her head spin around?" Lina thwapped her blond compatriot upside the head.  
  
"Twit. This is serious." After a long period of 'Follow the Filia', after which everyone was behind Zelgadis, the possessed dragon halted at the doors to the library. "It's locked. She can't get…"  
  
CR-RASH! Plink.  
  
Filia looked down in openmouthed amazement. She'd ripped the doorknob straight off the door. Recovering, she strode into the library and began pulling books off the shelves.  
  
"Um, Filia-san? What are you doing?" Amelia ventured. Filia spun around, eyes blazing.  
  
"Leave be, damnit! I have to find my book!" Everyone was startled by this. Apparently, the princess had not been so refined after all. After a long period of trying to extract more information and being rebuffed with threats of death and dismemberment, the five amateur Ghostbusters heard a gasp and a thud. They looked up to see Filia, with her eyes back to normal, holding a slim, diary-like volume.  
  
"Only book so good it's worth coming back from the dead for," she joked weakly. "By the way, if you want to see what the princess looked like, look at that portrait." They did, and gasped in shock. But for the brown hair and blazing golden eyes, the young woman staring fiercely down at them from the picture frame above the bookshelves could have been Lina herself.  
  
About half an hour later, the Slayers gang, now fully dressed, met in the kitchen to look at the book. It was, indeed, a diary. Suddenly, a gust of wind whipped through the kitchen, leaving the diary open at one page. Lina read out loud.  
  
"May 24:  
  
I do not know what it is about him that haunts me so, but of this I am certain: that he loves me even as I love him. He kissed me again today. His lips tasted like summer. I fear my father is planning something desperate, but I know not what it is. I mean to run to Seyruun with my beloved and use my art to support us. Father prefers Savah to me anyway. I leave you now, dear diary. On the next page, I will attempt to capture, with ink and paper, the essence of my dearest Tiru." Curious, Lina turned the page, and facefaulted. Except for the obviously keen mind displayed by the man in the portrait, his warm amber eyes, and the blood-red shock of hair crowning his head, the Princess' lover could have been Gourry's koppii. He even had the same innocent, naïve look to him. Suddenly, Lina thought of something. "Hey, Xelloss!"  
  
"Hai?"  
  
"When Princess Arin was in Filia, did she take the usual route?" For once, Xelloss offered useful information.  
  
"No, her route was more direct." Amelia cocked her head to one side.  
  
"But what happened to them to make them ghosts?"  
  
"Well, you see, Tiru was part dragon, and in those days, it was even before my time, crossbreeding was looked down upon. He would have been viewed as not a person, like an animal almost." Amelia went white.  
  
"So then…" She couldn't finish, but Xelloss understood.  
  
"Right here in the kitchen, after which the Princess threw herself from the balcony." A pot whacked against another with an indignant CLANG! Lina- tachi jumped.  
  
"Was that all?" Gourry asked, rather foolishly.  
  
Ching! Clang! Chingclang! ChingclangclangclangCLANG CLANGCLANG!!  
  
"Well," Lina said, after the racket had died down, "It looks like we don't have just one ghost. We have two."  
  
CRRRRRRRAAASSSHHH!!!!!  
  
"Great job, Lina," Zelgadis hollered over the crashing pots and howling, Arctic wind, "You HAD to make him MAD, didn't you!" After the flare-up of ghostly temper had calmed, Lina-tachi discussed how to reunite the two ghosts. They finally hit on the idea of willing possession. Surprisingly, Gourry volunteered to carry Tiru's spirit.  
  
"He does look like me, after all." Likewise, Lina was to bear the Princess. After the lengthy and draining summoning ceremony, Zelgadis scooped up Gourry's unconscious form for the trek back to the main hall. Cracking a rare joke, the chimera commented,  
  
"You HAVE to lay off on the 10-course chicken dinners, Gourry." After depositing the Swordsman of Light in an overstuffed armchair, he looked up. Lina was standing off by herself, a detached look on her face. Nervously, Amelia approached the sorceress.  
  
"Lina-san?" Lina turned to face her, and Amelia saw with shock that her eyes were the same golden color that Filia's had been earlier.  
  
"Not at the moment, I'm afraid."  
  
"Whoa," Filia commented, sotto voce, "willing transference." Then, Arin, for Lina was no longer in control, saw Gourry, and the tense, wary look disappeared from her face, to be replaced by joy so deep it was nearly pain.  
  
"Tiru…" Gourry's eyes, now as golden as Lina's, shot open.  
  
"Arin… Gods, I missed you! I spent so long furious, hating…" His voice was different, and nobody could place his accent, a mixture of lightened h and f sounds and r's that rumbled from inside him. Arin ran to him, and he folded her up in his arms, stroking her hair with the ease of long practice. "Ssh, ssh," Gourry, no, Tiru, comforted her. "I told you we'd be together forever, right?" Then, he looked straight at the other four Slayers, eyes saying what words could not, expressing gratitude too deep to be spoken. Then, their lips met in their first kiss in centuries, nay, millennia. There are very few oral joinings worthy of art and poetry, but this one, with tears of joy dampening golden and scarlet eyelashes, was among that sainted few. Then, they broke apart with a gasp, their own souls once more in control.  
  
"Whoa…" was Lina's only comment. The six looked over to the fireplace, where six bark tubes that had not been there the night before lay, the Slayers' names, one to each, inscribed on them in gold. Lina touched the name on hers, and the tube sprang open to become the frame for a picture about the size of your average hang-on-the-wall painting. However, the picture was of her. The Lina in the picture stood with her eyes closed and a light spell in her hands, wearing a red dress that, along with her unbound hair, flowed into the fire behind her, fire that made up the background for the picture. Along the bottom was written in black ink, in a firm, decisive hand, 'Bishoujo Tensai Madoushi'. In the top right corner, where the artist's signature usually went, was a stylized cat-face sketch. Gourry opened his. The background, this time, was of the sea. Gourry's picture double floated in said sea as a blue-tailed merman, looking friendly and wearing a blue shirt that melted into the watery background. The Sword of Light was at his waist, and a brightly-colored fish hovered near his right ear. Along the bottom of this picture was written, 'Swordsman of Light'. Amelia's picture was beautiful! The princess in the picture had white angel wings and a long white dress, both of which melted into the clouds where she flew above Seyruun, which, to Lina's acute embarrassment, had the chunk taken out of it that she'd inadvertently zapped. Her caption read 'Chibi-Hime'. Zelgadis opened his. The chimera stood against a stone background, wearing his normal clothes, with his human side carved into the stone behind him and his golem and Mazoku sides, as carvings in the stone, flanking him. An impression of Aka Houshi Rezo was in the stone, very faintly. Along the bottom, a much smaller-printed caption was written. It read, 'Here is a riddle, to guess if you can, sing the bells of Notre Dame. Who is the monster and who is the man?' Filia opened hers and gasped with delight. In the picture, her dragon form stood, wings partially unfurled, in a beautiful dawn forest. The caption read simply 'Dragon Priestess'. Xelloss' was very dramatic. There was only one Xelloss in the picture, however, his left, 'evil', and right, 'good', sides, separated by only contrast, were, as would be expected, vastly different. Xelloss' right side, in his usual garb but minus his staff, stood in a sunny field. His gloved right hand was extended in an 'I'm harmless' gesture. The only thing unusual about it was the white angel wing that grew from the shoulder of his 'good' half. The other half, however, was vastly different. The 'evil' half of Xelloss stood in the same forest as in Filia's portrait, only, this time, at dusk. The left half of the Trickster Priest wore charcoal-colored leggings, black boots, and a black Chinese tunic with purple sleeves and trim and the kanji for 'Juujinkan' embroidered in purple on it. A huge black bat wing spread from his shoulder in the 'evil' side. His ungloved, and clawed, left hand clutched a dagger, blade and hilt black, with a streak of blood down it, culminating in a drop at the tip. His eye on the left side was open, even though the right eye was, as usual, closed. There was a nasty little smirk on the left side of his face, but the right side was cheerfully smiling. The caption read, 'Zankoku na Tenshi'. (Author's note: This is my ideal Xelloss fanart, but I can't draw! WAAH!)  
  
"Cruel angel," Amelia whispered. "How true." After they'd all passed through the doorway of the castle, packed and ready to go, they, as one, turned and waved, and Filia, at least, could have sworn she saw something wave back.  
  
Finis. 


End file.
